


The Seventh Hitchhiker

by DesertVixen



Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen, Original Character(s), Revenge from Beyond, vanishing hitchhiker
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-21
Updated: 2018-09-21
Packaged: 2019-07-14 23:37:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16050923
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DesertVixen/pseuds/DesertVixen
Summary: Seven is not always lucky...





	The Seventh Hitchhiker

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tristesses](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tristesses/gifts).



The girl was just what she was looking for. Long dark hair drenched by the rain, slim figure, sad gray eyes. Standing by the side of the road like she didn’t have a friend in the world. Perfect.  


Diana pulled over, rolled down her window. “You look like you could use a lift.”

“Wow, thanks!” The girl got in the car, shivering and wet. She shot Diana a grateful look as she turned the heater up. “I’ve been out here for awhile and no one has even driven by.”

“It’s not good weather to hitchhike in,” Diana said, reproach in her voice. 

“There’s somewhere I just had to go,” the girl replied. 

The gray-eyed ones were the best. They were the most like the first girl. Gray-eyed Evie, who had broken her brother’s heart. Not only had Evie tried to leave him for another man, she had asked Diana – his own sister – to help her run away from the best brother in the world.

She’d given Evie a ride all right. One Evie had remembered – and regretted – for the rest of her short life. Diana had showed her that leaving was only possible on Diana’s terms, had watched the bright red blood stain the ground until Evie’s cries faded away, until she lay there looking up at the sky but seeing nothing. 

It had rained that night too, as Diana had dug the shallow grave where Evie would sleep forever. If only she hadn’t tried to leave Will, Diana told her as she piled dirt on top of Evie’s now-empty shell. 

They could have been sisters for all time.

***

Will never quite recovered, as the police searched for Evie with no success. Diana said nothing, of course – no one knew that she had offered Evie a ride to her final destination. She had managed to look suitably sad, expressing how much she just wished she could help, all the while knowing exactly where Evie was. Diana half-expected the body would be found – not on their own property, of course, but on a parcel of forest that had been untouched for thirty years, a place where they had played as children.

Search parties found nothing. The police found nothing. Hikers found nothing. At long last, the case went cold, and people moved on with their lives. All except Evie, of course. The trees had guarded her secrets well.

Evie was just another girl who had been there one moment and gone the next, the kind of story mothers used to scare their teenage daughters into caution. 

And Will. He didn’t move on either. Diana had expected it would take time, but she had never thought that her beloved brother would suffer even more over the traitorous girl’s disappearance. He only moped and sulked, staying alone in his apartment, until the first anniversary of Evie’s disappearance.

Diana had lost control, had pleaded with him to move on, not to waste the gift she had given him when she had taken care of Evie. 

She would never forget the horror in his eyes when he looked at her, as he drew back from her. “How..how could you? I loved her!”

Diana had run away from his accusing eyes and voice, in fear that the police would come for her. But when the policemen did knock on her door, it was not to arrest her.

It was to ask her to identify him. 

He had not written a note before he had climbed into his bathtub and opened his wrists, let his lifeblood spill out, but Diana knew why.

It was all Evie’s fault.

So now, when she saw another Evie walking around, trying to catch a ride, Diana always picked her up. Especially on a rainy night in late April, just like that first one.

That way she could take care of Evie before she hurt anyone else.

*** 

There had been six more Evies in the last two years, six more women who had been on their way to ruin someone’s brother’s life. This one would be number seven. How fitting, Diana thought, that it was April again. Seven always had been her lucky number.

“Where are you headed?”

The girl named an address that seemed vaguely familiar, but the important thing was that it passed right by the place she had taken all of the others. Diana wouldn’t have to make up some thin excuse. They talked as she drove – the girl said her friends called her Lynn – and Diana could feel her excitement building as Lynn told her how she was leaving her boyfriend. It was so perfectly Evie, she thought. 

Killing this one would be fun.

“Did you hear that?” Diana asked sometime later, as they drove on a deserted and winding road. “It sounds like one of the tires is going flat.”

Lynn concentrated for a moment. “Yeah, I think I do.”

Of course she didn’t hear anything, Diana thought scornfully. But she had found with the second girl that the ploy worked wonders, and had kept on using it. 

“Do you have a spare?” Lynn continued. “I can help you with it.”

“Yes, just let me pull off the road where it’s safe.” There was a little clearing coming up, of course, and a foot trail that led to where all of the Evies rested now. She’d have to drag or carry the girl, but that was simply a chore that couldn’t be avoided if she wanted some privacy.

When Diana stopped the car in the clearing and opened the trunk, she kept up a stream of chatter as she reached for her tire iron. It had served her well in her dealings with Evie – with all of them. 

She pointed at the left rear tire. “Wow, no wonder it’s flat! Look at that nail!”

When Lynn bent down to see, Diana swung the tire iron.

It passed through Lynn’s head.

Diana dropped the tire iron in shock.

She backed away from the figure, the misty figure that now seemed to be bleeding from a dozen wounds or more. The figure that was menacing her, forcing her towards the shallow graves among the trees.

“You won’t be picking up any more girls, Diana,” Lynn said in a sing-song voice. 

In Evie’s voice. Evie, the first Evie, the real Evie. 

The Evie she had argued with and stabbed to death in a rage with the hunting knife she had stolen from her brother.

The hunting knife was in her trunk, and the figure was between Diana and the car. 

“You won’t be hurting any more girls, Diana.” 

“You’re dead!” Diana screamed. “You’re dead!”

“That’s right,” Lynn – Evie – Evelyn, Diana remembered suddenly, but no one had ever used her full name. “You killed me three years ago tonight, right in these woods. You stabbed me and stabbed me. You buried me in a shallow grave that didn’t protect me from the animals. Then you killed all those other girls.”

Evie pointed at the woods behind Diana. Against her will, Diana turned to look over her shoulder. 

Six more figures came from the trees. All of them with dark hair and slim figures and pale eyes. All of them bleeding from wounds. All of them reaching for her.

She had nowhere to run. Was this how Evie had felt when Diana had held her down, stabbing her over and over?

Then she saw the open driver’s door, and knew it was her only chance. Diana ran to the car and prayed she could make it. Terror squeezed her heart as she jammed the key in the ignition, slammed her foot on the gas, feeling the car lurch forward.

“You won’t be hurting any more girls,” Evie said from the passenger seat. 

Diana screamed, turned out onto the road the wrong way.

She never saw the truck.

Evie stood by the side of the road, watching the aftermath of the accident. Diana wouldn’t be hurting any more girls. She wouldn’t be leaving these woods either, Evie knew. 

It seemed a fitting punishment. 

*** 

The slim girl with dark rain-drenched hair and pale eyes sat in the back of the police car, shivering despite the blanket they had given her. The police officer had picked her up on the side of the road where she had been hitchhiking – or trying to hitchhike, anyway. Only one car had stopped, with a woman driving, but had driven off before she could get in the car, as if she hadn’t even seen her.

Lucky break for her, the girl thought, looking at the accident scene. It was the same car, she was sure of it. The driver was clearly dead.

She could have been killed. She was going to be grounded for life, but she was still alive.

For a moment, the girl thought she saw a slim woman with dark hair standing by the side of the road, watching the police officer dealing with the truck driver, the destroyed car. But when she blinked, looked again, there was no one. Still, she had an eerie feeling that someone had been there.

She would never hitchhike again, she promised.

Never.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you like it! I really enjoyed your prompt and enjoyed coming up with something to fit it.


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